Jolene

Seldom does a film make me angry, but Jolene did. Notable for being the film debut of Jessica Chastain, she is the only thing good about this 2008 movie, directed by Dan Ireland.

What annoyed me about this film is that the main character constantly makes bad choices but doesn't seem to learn anything. Instead it's just an episodic look at a woman being exploited by men. That's certainly something that happens to many women, but Jolene tries to have it both ways--Chastain's character is presented as both smart and stupid.

What I also can't figure is that it's based on a story by E.L. Doctorow (it has nothing to do with Dolly Parton's song, at least not plot wise). Doctorow wrote almost exclusively about New York City, so it's hard to figure him writing about a Southern girl. I'd be interested in digging that story up and reading it to find out what happened.

We begin with Chastain at 15, marrying an amiable doofus just so she can out of foster care, where she is always being molested. Eventually she enters an affair with her husband's uncle, and that goes badly when the aunt finds out. She is sent to a juvenile detention center, where she catches the eye of an attendant (Francis Fisher), who helps her escape, but Chastain double-crosses her would-be lover and ends up in Phoenix, where she is a car-hop.

She ends up marrying a tattoo artist (Rupert Friendly), but he lets her down by selling drugs. So she's on the movie again, to Las Vegas, and becomes a stripper. She moves in with a fabulously wealthy professional gambler (Chazz Palmintieri). But he gets iced (we don't know why, other than that he stubbornly refuses new ideas).

The final act is the worst, and I could barely get through it. She moves to Tulsa and becomes a receptionist. She again catches the eye of a rich man, Michael Vartan, who wants to marry her despite knowing nothing of her past. He's a kook, and this is where the film goes completely off the rails. She marries him, despite there being absolutely no reason for her to do so, as she is unimpressed with his money. She has a baby, and she tells us in voice over narration that the baby makes her happy for the first time. This notion that a woman needs a child to be fulfilled is the opposite of feminist, and makes the character far weaker than she has shown us.

The film ends with her in Hollywood, wondering if she might be a movie star. So she hasn't learned anything, really, as certainly the film industry isn't going to be a place for her to meet men who don't want to exploit her.

Ireland lucks out by finding Chastain, which gives the film an unearned boost. She certainly tries to make Jolene a worthy character, but it's just not in the script.